Prime Minister Mark Carney’s cabinet may actually be worse than any line-up of ministers under Justin Trudeau, with the Minister of Public Safety as a poster child for ignorance and apathy:
[…] Then we have the Minister of Public Safety, Gary Anandasangaree — a Trudeau–Carney loyalist freshly installed under the new Liberal minority regime — who made headlines not for bold leadership, but for a shocking display of ignorance on the very file he’s been assigned to oversee: firearms policy.
During a session of debate on the current spending bill, Conservative MP Andrew Lawton posed a basic question:
“Do you know what an RPAL is?”
An RPAL, or Restricted Possession and Acquisition Licence, is a standard certification required by law for any Canadian who wants to own restricted firearms, such as handguns or certain rifles. It’s a core element of Canada’s legal firearms framework.
The Minister’s response?
“I do not.”
Lawton followed up with another foundational question:
“Do you know what the CFSC is?”
The CFSC, or Canadian Firearms Safety Course, is a mandatory course required for all individuals seeking to obtain a firearms license in Canada — including the RPAL. It’s the very first step every legal gun owner in the country must complete. This is basic civics for anyone involved in firearms policy.
Anandasangaree replied again:
“I do not know.”
This wasn’t a “gotcha” moment. It was a revealing moment. The Minister of Public Safety, the individual charged with implementing gun bans, overseeing buyback programs, and crafting firearms legislation, has no familiarity with the fundamental licensing and safety processes every Canadian gun owner must follow.
In any other profession, this level of unpreparedness would be disqualifying. If a surgeon couldn’t name a scalpel, he’d be pulled from the operating room. But in Ottawa? It qualifies you to oversee a multi-hundred-million-dollar national gun seizure operation.
And that brings us to the next moment of absurdity.
Lawton asked the minister how much money had already been spent on the federal firearms buyback program, the centerpiece of the Liberal government’s Bill C-21, which targets legally acquired firearms now deemed prohibited.
Anandasangaree’s answer?
“About $20 million.”
But that doesn’t match the government’s own published data. In a report tabled by Public Safety Canada in September 2023, it was disclosed that $67.2 million had already been spent on the buyback as of that date. The majority of that spending was attributed to “program design and administration” — before a single firearm had even been collected.
So what happened? Did the government refund tens of millions of dollars? Were contracts cancelled? Of course not.
They just reframed the accounting — separating so-called “preparatory costs” and implying they don’t count as part of the buyback, even though they exist entirely to implement it.
It’s not transparency. It’s political bookkeeping — a deliberate attempt to make a costly, unpopular program appear manageable.
And it didn’t end there. When Lawton asked for the number of firearms that had actually been collected under the buyback, the response was yet another dodge. The Minister and his department couldn’t provide a number.
That’s right: after spending over $67 million, the federal government can’t even say how many guns have been retrieved. Yet they’re moving full steam ahead, with the support of a minister who doesn’t understand the system he’s responsible for.
This isn’t policymaking. It’s blind ideology strapped to a blank cheque. And the people paying the price are law-abiding citizens — not criminals, not gangs, and not smugglers.
At this rate, I can’t imagine how he’ll still be in cabinet by the end of summer.
